


the first shoots of green after a wildfire

by feralphoenix



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Intrusive Thoughts, Other, Player as Antagonist, Post-Undertale Soulless Pacifist Route, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-12 22:57:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7952515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long after the underground has gone empty, Flowey the Flower gets a visit from the last person he would expect.</p><p>It gets worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the first shoots of green after a wildfire

**Author's Note:**

> _(This is going to be our evil inheritance_ – you said, cry no more)

It’s easy to lose track of the days when there’s literally nothing to differentiate one from the next. Everything is a long ugly gray blur of boredom and depression and loneliness—which he tries not to mind, because it’s better this way, isn’t it?—and for all he knows, it’s been years since the monsters went free.

Still, when he hears soft footsteps on the leaf-strewn stone, the first thought in his head is that he can’t say he wasn’t expecting this eventually.

(He tries to smother the instinct to perk up beneath the dull resignation, or at least convince himself that it’s just the same old hopeless attraction towards the new and interesting, and not relief. He doesn’t deserve _relief._ He doesn’t deserve anything.)

The human child emerges into the light. They’re wearing clothes he doesn’t recognize—jeans heavily stained in dirt, orange-and-yellow striped hoodie with a cutesy leaf pattern on the sleeves. They’re shouldering a heavy-looking black backpack. Their hair’s in the same rough bowl cut as it was when he last saw them, and they don’t seem to have grown much. Their eyes are still hooded in the bright light pouring from the hole above him, but he can see slivers of red iris beneath their protectively lowered eyelids.

Flowey thinks about saying something rude and nasty to make them go away, and a little to see what it will make them do, little to no hope though there might be of getting pacifistic Frisk to lash out and end his miserable existence for him. Then he sighs and droops. “Do you _seriously_ not have anything better to do?” he asks. It comes out sounding whiny.

They trudge stoically up and start shrugging out of their backpack, setting it down at the edge of the golden flowers that mark Chara’s grave. It clanks. If there’s a flowerpot and a trowel or something in there, he will scream and hide in the soil for a million years.

“C’mon, Frisk,” he says with a sigh. “I told you already—I don’t want to subject everybody else to some accident of science that’s missing his love and compassion glands. I’m fine with this.” He is a lying sack of shit, but this isn’t at all new. “Go home. Go be with the people who love you.”

“Frisk can’t come to the phone right now,” they say, a little flat and a lot sarcastic, and Flowey feels some phantom jolt in the vicinity of where his heart would be if he were still a monster.

Frisk doesn’t speak. He doesn’t know this voice. But he knows the tone, and he knows the flat angular smile that pulls against Frisk’s soft baby-round features, incongruous. Their eyes are red—red like rubies, red like fresh blood. “How,” he says.

Chara shrugs as if through great pain. “Don’t look at me. Frisk fell. I heard your voice. I woke up.”

“Where’s Frisk?” he asks, suspicious, and something guilty twists in him—something that he’s pretty sure would be a lot stronger if he could still feel compassion—when Chara winces.

“Yeah. I can’t blame you for not wanting to see me,” they say. Their smile is mirthless. They close their eyes, expression smoothing out. “Frisk’s been gone a long time. I can’t blame _them,_ either.”

“What’s going on here,” he says slowly. There’s something not quite right about the shine of Chara’s eyes, something off about their tone, and now that they’re closer, the stains on their jeans don’t look like dirt at all.

Chara plunks themself down at the edge of their grave, framing their backpack in both hands. They don’t seem like they’re having any trouble steering Frisk’s body despite Frisk’s supposed absence, and Flowey wonders for a moment how exactly they’re doing it—if they’re riding inside the body like a horror-movie possession, or if they’re puppeteering from outside. The mental image of Chara dragging Frisk around on strings like a muppet is actually pretty hilarious, and he feels kinda bad for thinking so when he knows he ought to pity Frisk in this situation.

“I was right,” Chara says. “I was right all along. I was confused for a while—I wasn’t sure, after our plan failed and I got brought back—but _they_ showed me I was right. Perfect happy endings don’t, they don’t exist. To accomplish something, sacrifice is required.” Their hand settles on the zipper, fingers shaking. “Happy endings don’t exist. But you—you deserve a better ending than this, Ree. You didn’t deserve any of what we—what _I—”_ Here they seem to choke, and they lower their head, shoulders shaking.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Flowey says slowly.

Chara laughs. The sound is ugly, and doesn’t fit Frisk’s wispy little voice. “Of course you wouldn’t. _When we reset we erased everyone’s memories._ You don’t remember what I did. Doesn’t matter. I’m a bad person. A bad friend. This doesn’t make up for anything. But I brought you a present.”

And with only that cryptic explanation, Chara unzips the backpack. Flowey forgets to breathe.

Souls, human souls, are jammed together in one of Asgore’s old soul tanks. Dozens of them, blue and yellow and cyan and orange and purple and green and red, every color of human soul there is, straining and writhing.

Flowey’s mind goes blank; all he can do is stare. They do nothing, sitting still with their head bowed as if in expectation.

“Chara, what is this,” he says at length.

“For you,” they say, and: Oh. Horrified fascination fills him up. He stares at the souls. It is incredible that they were able to harvest so many with a weak little child’s body and a knife. He can’t even imagine the planning involved, but then Chara always was better at that kind of thing than him.

“It doesn’t fix anything,” they repeat. They’re shuddering now. “But this is all I could think to do to make it up to you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Their voice wobbles and cracks on the last few syllables. Heavy tears drip down Frisk’s face, their mouth is pulled in a grimace, and their nose is starting to run.

From the ache where his soul ought to be, Flowey is very sure that if he could still feel love, he would be crying too.

Chara reaches out with Frisk’s hands even as they hide their face behind the soul container, falling just short of his petals, for all the world like they’re scared to touch him or expect him to pull away in fear or disgust.

“I’m sorry,” they’re still repeating. “Ree, I’m so sorry.”

He gently reaches out with root and vine to touch their heaving shoulders. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> this fic got beautiful fanart from [inverts](http://inverts.tumblr.com/post/149968215295)... (clasps hands) Thank You...


End file.
